Both Sides of the Line Read online

  I think John still views us as the older kids who’d taken him in as one of our own when other upperclassmen would’ve left him to drift. And I know he’s never forgotten his first two years of playing with the ’74 and ’75 Bosco Bears. “I wasn’t sure how a freshman was going to be received by varsity players,” he admitted. “I’ve never forgotten the support and endless encouragement you guys showed me.”

  Of course, as soft-spoken (and introspective) as John is, it only takes one push before he’ll deliver a look rooted in Germantown (then one of the toughest housing projects in the Boston area).

  Our old head coach, Bob Currier, was the last to arrive. Now in his late seventies, he grinned when he told us that, even after sixty long years, he was still hard at work in the coaching game. To me, Currier still looked more like a track coach than a football coach: a slender man with glasses and a misleadingly gentle, easygoing smile. Currier grew up in Brighton, and developed a brilliant mind both in the classroom and on the field. He was intense, even brutal at times, in the way he treated his players. Some kids loved him, some hated him, and I, like most, just didn’t want to get on his bad side.

  By ten o’clock, we were all sitting together drinking coffee and eating Frankie’s pastries under the old open-air boat shelter, its platform dotted with picnic tables still wet from the morning dew. The warm breeze coming off the Charles felt inviting, different from my football memories of it as a muggy dust bowl in the summer; comfortable in the fall; and a frozen tundra in the winter.

  Nearly half a century had passed since those afternoon practices and games, and yet, here I was, laughing all over again with the guys who’d made it possible: Skip Bandini, Abe Benitez, Frank Marchione, Ski Ewanoski, John Sylva, and Coach Currier—all as if we’d never parted ways in the first place.

  “Fellas, it’s so great to see you,” I said, standing to take the floor. “I know some of us haven’t seen each other in a long, long time, but let me just take a minute to introduce Max. He and I met back in 2000 and, after hearing the story of Coach Dempsey and the ’74 season, we agreed that Bosco’s ’74 championship ride shouldn’t be allowed to disappear from memory.” I paused as a murmuring of agreement drifted through the group. “And though he and I are collaborating on this project, Max is the real force behind why we’re meeting here today.”

  While I could tell that the guys were listening to me, caution remained clearly in their eyes. Max was an outsider. Max hadn’t been a part of the team. He hadn’t been a part of us.

  “As you remember,” I continued, “we had two miserable seasons at Bosco. Our sophomore year, we had the largest team in the school’s history and went 1-8. Our junior year, we were 3-5-1, and lived through a horrible tragedy.”

  I was forced to pause again as several men shifted uncomfortably, some diverting their gazes, their cheer immediately dampened by the memory.

  “So,” I continued, sipping coffee, knowing this one area would be especially difficult for us to discuss openly, “it made perfect sense when the Globe predicted that Don Bosco would end the season in the Catholic Conference cellar.”

  “And there wasn’t one player who could argue with that prediction,” Skip said, shifting the mood back as the guys got to nodding and chuckling once more.

  “Yeah, what reason did we have to think otherwise?” Frankie grinned.

  “Fellas, would you mind if I ask a question?” Max piped up.

  “You’re the whole reason we’re here today,” Mike said. “Jump in any time.”

  Max nodded his thanks and jumped: “Would you all agree that you wouldn’t have won the championship without Dempsey?”

  “Absolutely. Without question.” It was the unanimous answer as the team traded nods around the table, including Coach Currier.

  “So, what was it about him? What did he bring to the table that you hadn’t seen before?”

  “Max,” Skip said, “at 5’7” and two hundred and ten pounds, the man got us to believe that size means nothing in the world of football. We were the smallest team in the school’s history, but he still led us as champions through a season in one of the toughest leagues in the state.”

  “It was all about quickness, technique, and desire. That’s all he preached. He pounded it into us,” Frankie said, his large hands folding together on the tabletop. “We were so small. I think Eddie Dominguez and Yogi were the only solid two hundred pounders we had.”

  Abe couldn’t keep himself from laughing, “Speakin’ of Yogi, does anyone remember the time Dempsey went live with him during a pit drill?”

  “No. What’re you talking about?” Mike asked, confused.

  “I sure as hell remember,” I said, joining right in with Abe’s chuckling. “Dempsey was teaching us line technique and was stressing how important it was to focus on the movement of the offensive lineman’s hand.”

  “I remember, I remember,” Skip said, laughing. “Dempsey got pissed with Yogi for not coming off the ball quick enough.”

  “And of course Dempsey flipped around his baseball cap like he always did when he was pissed,” Abe added with a grin.

  “Everyone knew shit was going to hit the fan when he flipped his hat around like that,” Skip agreed, shaking his head over a nostalgic smile.

  “Well,” I started up again, “after Dempsey and Yogi went live for a few reps, before speaking to all the rest of us, he yelled: Hey, Bandini, you gettin’ all of this?, while he’s still in his stance, right?”

  “Dempsey was a stickler for detail,” Currier smirked.

  “So then Dempsey looks over his shoulder to say somethin’ to one of us and accidentally moves his own hand—”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I remember now,” Mike said, pointing a bent finger at me. “And so Yogi drills Dempsey right in the forehead with his helmet!”

  “All I remember was Dempsey going wild. He grabbed the player closest to him—I think it was Richie Abner—and tore his helmet clear off his head,” Abe said.

  “Was his head still in it?” Mike asked, grinning.

  “Thank God I wasn’t a lineman,” John muttered, amazed.

  “What I remember is Yogi pleading for his life. He threw up his hands, Sorry, Coach, you moved your hand. I thought you told me to come off the ball when you moved your hand!” I said, mimicking Yogi backing up, eyes wide.

  “I remember all of us taking a giant step backward as we watched Dempsey just dismember the poor kid. I mean, we all loved Yogi, sure, but the hell with him, right? I mean, good luck, pal,” Skip said, all of us howling with laughter.

  And, just like that, a forty-year gap disappeared.

  “Wow,” Max said, astonished, clearly not knowing what else to say. “Dismemberment is pretty extreme. So, how big of a role did Dempsey’s famous temper really play?”

  “It was certainly…part of things,” Currier said, all the rest of us nodding along.

  “How so?”

  “It goes back to the street,” Currier said, sobering. “He always had it—everyone always remembers his temper—but you have to understand that the streets ran through him his whole life. The street was what filled him when things got hot.”

  Silence fell over us once again. Thank God for Skip, always willing to hammer away at our ice.

  “Fellas,” Skip said, taking the time to weigh his words. “I’m not sure if it’s the right time to bring this up, but if we’re gonna talk about Dempsey . . . well, what happened to Michael Monahan can’t be ignored.”

  “Michael Monahan?” John said, baffled. “Who’s he?”

  Looking around, it was obvious how uncomfortable we all felt; everyone was suddenly crossing and uncrossing their arms, clenching their jaws, and avoiding eye contact. All of us—all the vets, the guys pre-John Sylva, anyway―knew the story of Michael Monahan.

  After Michael’s tragedy, Currier and Dempsey went out on
the town to drown their sorrows and ended up driving a Mustang down the wrong side of Storrow Drive, hitting a bus head-on in a Cambridge tunnel.

  “Wait a minute, Coach,” John began, carefully, unaccusingly, his attention zeroed in on Currier. “Do you mean to tell me that Bus Left and Bus Right were plays that you and Dempsey created after you actually really hit a bus head-on? Shitfaced?”

  I can’t say which of us was most grateful, but our relief was immediate when a new voice erupted behind us,

  “Hey, Bosco’s Best!” Chris Staub laughed. “Still sittin’ on your asses? Everyone take a lap!”

  Chris stepped up to greet us, followed closely by a man I barely recognized. Life, it seemed, had ridden this other man very hard.

  “It’s great to see that even after all these years, things haven’t changed much, you lazy bastards,” Chris grinned, exchanging hugs and slaps on the back as we all stood to welcome him.

  At a hundred and ninety pounds, Chris had played both tight end and defensive end during high school. Chris came from a family of ten brothers and sisters, all athletes. He was the kind of guy a mother would’ve called “strapping”; and though skilled in many sports, he’d always had a special love for football.

  Chris went on to have a stellar football career at Bosco and in college. His opportunity to even attend and play at college, however, hadn’t been his work alone. That opportunity, I later learned, had been due in large part to Dempsey.

  “Dear God,” Frankie said, jumping to his feet, the first to recognize the man at Chris’ side. “Is that Paul Carouso?”

  Paul grew up in Somerville, another famously tough section of Boston. Paul had been a gifted running back on offense and a tough-hitting defensive back who weighed in at one hundred and seventy-five pounds. Although we hadn’t seen each other in decades, we all had heard of Paul’s unimaginable tragedy during the summer of his senior year. We gave a softer greeting to Paul, one that was somehow more respectful than all the others had been up to that point—perhaps it’d even been close to reverent, a shift that I know Max picked up on.

  At their arrival, everyone indulged in another soul-healing round of hugs and greetings before settling back into the rhythm of swapping war stories. And, as I introduced Max to Chris and Paul more formally, Paul revealed a magic key to our past: a dazzling memory for details and statistics, many of them stretching all the way back to his freshman year.

  “There’s no way you could possibly remember all that shit,” Frank said, earning another wild laugh from the group.

  “Hey, Coach,” Chris broke in. “Can I ask you to confirm a Dempsey story for me? I was never actually certain of the truth of this one.”

  “Shoot,” Currier smiled, “though if the story’s unbelievable, it’s most likely true.”

  “I’d heard that Dempsey got into a fight in Kenmore Square with four Boston University football players. Dempsey knocked out one of the captains before the rest of the players dove back into their car. Then he pulled a gun, shot open the doors, and beat each player senseless, one-by-one.”

  Currier sighed but didn’t pause a moment to even consider lying. “Yes, it’s true. But what you probably don’t know is what took place later in the courtroom. Dempsey was brought up on multiple charges, but it took time for a court date to be set. So, by the time they finally got in front of a judge, the players had healed up pretty well. Dempsey went out and bought a polyester suit two sizes too small and walked into the courtroom alone, dressed in that ridiculous get-up and all topped off with his old, oversized Coke-bottle glasses. The judge asked the players’ lawyer how they pleaded, and the lawyer stood up and said, You have it all wrong, Your Honor. We’re pressing charges against that man, Jack Dempsey. The judge leaned forward, looked down at Dempsey, and said, You mean to tell me this fat, little Jewish guy beat up those four football players? You have to be kidding! Don’t waste my time. Case dismissed. And, just like that, the case was dismissed.”

  I knew Max was taken aback by our laughter, but there was no way around it. For a bunch of old street kids like us, Dempsey’s physical power, ruthlessness, and creativity were still things to be admired.

  Home Field Advantage

  “At Bosco, we’re not ashamed of our dress code; we’re proud of it.”

  —Dana Barros, Saint John Don Bosco Technical High School Administrator

  It was the fall of 1970, back when Tom, my older brother, was a senior at Don Bosco High. Tom was a varsity football player, and that meant competing in the Catholic Conference, one of the toughest and most talented football divisions in Massachusetts. An offensive tackle, Tom was a quiet, tough kid, lean and quick. I, on the other hand, was an eighth grader, small, athletically uncertain but determined, while anxious to be more like Tom. Our youngest brother, John, was only two at the time, but all three of us Kelly boys, as it turns out, were destined to play for the Bosco Bears.

  On a Saturday afternoon, I entered our bedroom to find my brother sitting by himself, his football equipment scattered on the floor. He had this “out to lunch” look on his face, and I knew at once that Bosco must have lost the game. I was kicking myself for not going, as if that would have made a difference. I hardly ever missed a game, but Dad had been asked to cover an additional shift with the Boston Police Department (the BPD), leaving me stranded without a ride.

  “Tom,” I said. “What happened? How bad was it?”

  He smiled, reading my concern, and said, “No, actually, we won. But I’ve just never played against a tougher group of kids.”

  The team they’d played that day was St. Columbkille, a small Catholic school in Brighton. Jack Dempsey was their coach. Tom had heard of Dempsey and his coaching talents before, but Dempsey was best known as street. Short, and with a deceptively unassuming power, Dempsey was infamous as one of the toughest street fighters in the whole of the Brighton area. St. Columbkille’s team was made up of only fourteen players, but they were fourteen who never backed down.

  Bosco, with its forty-five to fifty players, won the game only by wearing the Knights down—a fact which didn’t go unnoticed by Tom or his fellow players, all of them sharing their astonishment on the bus ride home.

  “Boy, could they hit!” Tom said. “They were really something!”

  “Those kids are nothing without Dempsey,” Bruce McDonald (a lineman) shot back. “Remember them last year? Same kids, different coach, different result.”

  “Just goes to show ya what a good coach can do for a team,” Tom shrugged.

  “Dempsey’s not just a good coach,” Bruce said. “He’s one tough son-of-a-bitch. I heard he fought this guy down at The Tap the other night, one of those big muscle-heads—Dempsey was working the door. I think Craig Cemate was actually there—he’s the one who told me about it.

  “Hey, Cemate, weren’t you at the Dempsey fight last week at The Tap?”

  With a laugh, Cemate turned from his seat and shouted back, “Jesus, what a fight! I never saw anything like it in my life. Yeah, I saw the whole thing.” Passing around a few excuse me’s, Cemate bumpily made his way back to where Tom and Bruce were sitting before continuing: “It was closing time, and Dempsey was trying to clear everyone out. This big dude—he must’ve been 6’4”, two hundred and fifty pounds—was shitfaced, sitting alone at the bar and wouldn’t leave. I heard Dempsey say, ‘Okay, pal, time to wrap it up.’ The big guy takes one look at Dempsey and says, ‘Go fuck yourself, you fat little shit.’ And then, out of the clear blue, the guy up and smashes a beer bottle right across Dempsey’s forehead!”

  Tom, mouth agape, pressed Cemate, “So what happened?”

  “Dempsey went wild,” he said, hushed and dramatic. “He lunged at the guy, but before he could get his hands on him, the owner held Dempsey back and told him to settle the matter outside, not wanting to see his place destroyed. He knew there was no stopping Dempsey once he got started. The who
le bar emptied out onto the sidewalk to watch the fight. If you were an outsider lookin’ in at these two guys squaring off, you’d have felt bad for Dempsey, tellin’ yourself that poor little fella doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Dempsey’s what—5’6”? 5’7”?” Bruce asked.

  “Yeah, while carryin’ two hundred and ten pounds of solid muscle,” Cemate said, growing a little impatient, wanting to continue the story. “The moment they stepped outside, the big guy tackled Dempsey, totally engulfing him on the ground. I was like, Oh shit, Dempsey’s gonna get his ass kicked! But then he just went berserk on the guy and—are you ready for this?—Dempsey knocked the guy out while lying on his back! Knocked him out cold! When have you ever heard of anyone knocking someone out while lying on their back?”

  “Holy shit!” Bruce chuckled, bright with admiration.

  “Then,” Cemate said, grinning like a fiend, “just to send an even clearer message to the poor bastard, Dempsey goes and bites the guy’s ear clean off, with his teeth!”

  When Tom first told me this story, I was both horrified and awestruck. How was I to know that one day, this same man who’d removed a guy’s ear in a bar brawl would become such a powerful and important influence in my life?

  Saint John Don Bosco Technical School was an all-boys Catholic school just outside the infamous Combat Zone, Boston’s red light district. Our student body included about a thousand kids from all over the city, most of us taking the subway to school, giving us two educations at once; one that adhered to strict Catholic values, and another that spoke of the world’s forgotten: the homeless and the sex workers.

  Walking up from the Orange Line, we all got a regular morning dose of porn from the gauntlet of strip clubs located on Washington Street. Every morning, dressed in our school uniforms, our hair neatly trimmed and our shoes tightly laced, we Bosco students walked the last few blocks to school. The hookers loved to taunt us, especially the freshmen, calling out, “Come back when you’re all grown up, boys!” Or, “If you really want to be a man, you’ll come back and see us soon!”